Navigation menu

Menu

The Top 6 Tips For Helping Children Blend Sounds

Sunday, March 4, 2018

When a Student Finds It Hard to Blend Sounds Together: 6
Tips for Getting Over the Hump

While very often, things go along quite swimmingly in the Orton-Gillingham lesson plan, from time to time we all have a student that has particular difficulty
blending sounds together. They know their letters and can correctly identify
the sounds they make. They can say the sounds in sequence, but they struggle to
put the sounds together to create a recognizable word. No two children are
exactly the same, but here are some techniques that can be helpful for kids
that have difficulty blending.

1.Pay
attention to Phonemic Awareness.

Since phonemic awareness skills follow a
predictable developmental sequence, if a student is not secure in earlier
phonemic awareness skills such as isolating sounds, they are going to have
extreme difficulty blending sounds. Even older students may be lacking in these
skills and have not had adequate learning opportunities to fill in the missing
pieces in the upper grades. Additionally, make sure that the student can
differentiate voiced and unvoiced pairs (g/k, v/f, b/p, j/ch). Segmenting and
blending go hand in hand, so be sure to work on both skills. This phonemic awareness resource may assist your students who still struggle in this area.

2.Simplify
the task.

Start with blending 2 sounds using
just one vowel sound at a time. Stick with that vowel sound until the student
is proficient at blending two sounds. Work with consonant sounds that are
easily held, also called continuous consonants, such as f, l, m, n, r, s, v, z,
sh, th. Work with just a few sounds at a time. For students with extreme
difficulty, it may work best to continue to work with a single vowel with 3
sounds before introducing other vowel sounds to the mix. Be careful of am and
an since these chunks distort the sound of the a. Reinforce the blending and
segmenting skills with these sounds across the lesson in phonemic awareness,
reading and writing activities. When moving to three sounds, blending the
beginning two sounds to the coda, or final sound, ba-t, is an easier skill than
blending the onset and rime b-at.

3.Scaffold
the learning.

Remember to follow a gradual
release of responsibility model of instruction (I do, we do, you do) providing
plenty of scaffolding to support the student in their efforts. Since blending
is the basis of the rest of their reading work, it is very important to teach
to mastery.

4.Get them
moving.

Don’t underestimate the importance
of movement during an Orton-Gillingham lesson plan. Starting with big movements, gross motor skills such as hopping
from one hula hoop to another as they say the sounds can provide valuable
support for a child that is really struggling. Using smaller manipulatives is
also very important. Elkonin boxes are a valuable tool here. One helpful trick
is to tie 3 pieces of yarn together (green, yellow and red are great choices to
represent the beginning, middle and ending sounds) and have the child run their
finger along each section of the yarn while saying the sound. The student
should continue to make the sound until they reach the next section of yarn.
This is where using continuous consonants is very helpful because they are easy
to stretch. Speeding this procedure up as they practice can help a student for whom
blending hasn’t clicked.

5.Try
cumulative blending.

Cumulative blending is another way
of practicing blending words together that is particularly helpful for students
that struggle with working memory to such a degree that impacts their ability
to blend words. For cumulative blending, the reader returns to the beginning of
the word after adding each sound. So for example, the word Sal would be blended
as S…..sa….sal. This technique is particularly helpful for a student that is
having trouble moving from blending 2 sounds to 3 sounds or 3 sounds to 4 or 5.

6.Use
imagery.

Blending sounds is such an abstract
concept that even with the use of manipulatives and extensive modeling, it is
difficult for many children to really understand precisely what you are asking
of them. Using descriptive imagery such as vacuuming up the sounds for
cumulative blending or melting the sounds together like melting chocolate can
make the process less abstract and more relatable.

Blending sounds together is a crucial skill for students to master
in order to continue to progress in reading. For a student that has difficulty,
building the task piece by piece and teaching blending until they are competent
and proficient with CVC words and have the skills to tackle words with initial
and final blends is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. There are few
opportunities in the classroom curriculum, particularly in intermediate grades
and beyond to provide the level of scaffolding that some of our children need to
become truly proficient. We must provide them with those opportunities in small
group instruction, tutoring or intervention services.

Do you have any further ideas or questions? I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to comment below. Thank you for stopping by my blog today.

My name is Emily. I am a mom of four, and an educator who loves creating and blogging about all things literacy! As an Orton-Gillingham instructor, I seek to find and create resources to assist children with dyslexia. Thank you for stopping by my blog today!